More leads are not the answer if the follow-up is broken

One of the most common things I hear from agents when business slows down is, "I need more leads." Sometimes that is absolutely true. But quite often, when you look a little closer, there are already opportunities sitting everywhere: buyer enquiries, open-home attendees, past appraisals, previous clients, prospective sellers and people sitting in databases who, at some point, have given us a reason to believe they may buy or sell.

The issue is not always how many opportunities are coming in. Sometimes it is what happens to them once they arrive.

We have become incredibly good at generating leads. Portals, social media, digital advertising, prospecting platforms, databases, AI and automation have given agents more ways than ever to identify and communicate with potential clients. But generating a lead and developing a relationship are two very different things. There is also a difference between contacting someone and genuinely following them up.

Calling a buyer every few weeks and asking, "Are you ready to buy yet?" is technically follow-up. So is calling a prospective vendor repeatedly to ask whether they are ready to sell. But from the client's perspective, what value has actually been added to the conversation?

Good follow-up should give someone a reason to want to hear from you again. It might be a property that genuinely matches what they told you they were looking for, a recent sale that changes their understanding of value, information about what buyers are currently responding to, or simply remembering something they told you in the previous conversation and asking how it progressed. The objective shouldn't always be to get an immediate yes. Sometimes it is simply to move the relationship forward.

Fewer enquiries, more weight on each one

That distinction is becoming increasingly important. With changes to price advertising requirements coming into effect in NSW, buyers will have greater access to pricing information on properties advertised online. Historically, some enquiries have been generated simply because a buyer wanted to know the price guide. As that information becomes easier to access without making an enquiry, it is reasonable to expect that some of those enquiries will disappear.

I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. What it may mean is that the buyer who does pick up the phone, submit an enquiry or walk through an open home becomes even more important.

The question is what happens next. Do we learn what they are actually trying to achieve? Do we understand why this property interested them? What have they already seen? Are they waiting for the right home, dealing with finance, trying to sell first or simply at the beginning of a process that might take another six months? Or do we record their name, make one call and move on to the next enquiry?

Real estate decisions rarely happen according to the timeframe we would prefer. A buyer who is not ready today may purchase three months from now. An appraisal may not become a listing until next year. The person we meet at an open home may eventually sell a property we didn't even know they owned. The opportunity often exists long before the transaction.

Technology helps, people still decide

This is where our databases should become enormously valuable, but only if we treat them as more than somewhere to store names and phone numbers. AI and automation can remind us who needs to be contacted, help identify opportunities and make our communication more consistent. Used well, technology should give us more time to have better conversations. But I don't believe it can replace the relationship itself.

People know when they are receiving communication because a system told someone to send it, and they know when an agent genuinely remembers their situation and is trying to help. The best follow-up still feels human. As technology becomes more sophisticated, I actually think that human connection becomes more valuable, not less.

Before we spend more money, create another campaign or decide that the solution to slower business is another hundred leads, there is probably a simpler question worth asking: what happened to the opportunities we already had?

More leads will not fix a broken follow-up process. They will simply give us more opportunities to lose.

Trent Brewer is director of residential sales at Urban Real Estate. The opinions expressed are his own.